A few months after Shosha appeared, Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Just as the Nobel Prize is a fitting tribute to a lifetime of letters, so Shosha is an epitome of that life. Like all of Singer’s other work, it is superficially a simple narrative. Yet it articulates all the themes that inform Singer’s writing. Here is the mysticism of dybbuks and demons, which Shosha sees in her dreams. Here is the closed world of Hasidic Jewry confronting the infinite secular universe. Here are the passions of the flesh and the metaphysical yearnings of the soul. Here is the search for the meaning of suffering and life, and here is the lack of an answer.

Though Singer has left the world of Polish Hasidism behind him, he carries it with him, too. In the yeshiva, the best student is not the one with the right answers but the one with the right questions. For Shosha, Singer deserves to go to the head of the class.